


Going West

by littleconnections



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 10:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1465246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleconnections/pseuds/littleconnections
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is the Winter Soldier. He is not Bucky Barnes. Not yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going West

He is the Winter Soldier. He is not Bucky Barnes.

Not yet.

He is standing at the side of the river. There is a gun in his holster. There are knives in his clothes. There is a jacket covering up his arm.

He can feel him in his mind, just beyond reach. He is struggling to get out, to become what he once was but he doesn’t know how to trigger it. He doesn’t know how to become whole. He doesn’t know if he wants to.

So he runs and he thinks. Maybe the man on the bridge, the one he knew, the one he didn’t kill, maybe he will find him. Maybe he will know what he wants.

The Winter Soldier goes west.

\--

Steve is in the car with Sam. Steve is driving, Sam is in the passenger’s seat, fiddling with iPod connected to the stereo. It’s warm and they have the windows rolled down. The landscape that passes them doesn’t register as anything except green sameness.

“Doesn’t the driver usually get to choose the music?” Steve asks.

“What?” Sam smiles at him, teeth white, “Don’t you trust me?”

Steve laughs.

His shield and Sam’s wings are on the back seat, their luggage is in the trunk. They are going west.

\--

He is the Winter Soldier. He is Bucky Barnes.

Sometimes he remembers things from long ago. Small things, the way fries tasted different, and the music that used to in bars. He doesn’t know what to do with these things, doesn’t like to think about them.

He wakes up in motel rooms and is afraid because there is no one there, telling him what to do. He doesn’t know how to function without a mission. So he lies in the bed and does not get up because he does not know what he should do if he did. There is nothing out there for him.

He knows that he failed to complete his last mission. Sometimes he thinks he should go out and complete it, only because there is nothing else. Then he remembers the way the man on the bridge had looked at him. That he had saved him and hadn’t fought back.

_Steve_ , says the other man in his head.

\--

They follow the trail. Every few days Stark will call Steve and let them know what he knows. It’s never much, a random sighting here, caught on camera there. There’s no pattern to his movements, west, north, south, circling back around but slowly and inexorably they make their way towards the coast.

Sometimes Steve drives and Sam flies, whirling and dipping over cornfields. Steve squints at him when he sees it, too far away to hear but he can tell he’s laughing.

Sometimes Sam drives and tells Steve about his childhood, growing up in Harlem and about his father who was a minister and his mother who loved him. It is a different childhood than Steve’s but it is hard, too. Sam tells him how he likes birds and what it’s like to fly.

Eventually he asks, “So you wanna tell me about what happened on the helicarrier?”

Yes. No. Maybe.

“Not yet,” Steve says.

\--

He is not the Winter Soldier. He is not Bucky Barnes.

He is a half-thing, an in-between.

He has money, but no passport. Stays in dirty motels, circles around and around. He doesn’t know what he is looking for, what he is hoping to find. Neither Bucky Barnes nor the Winter Soldier has ever visited the American Midwest.

He cuts his hair but does it badly, ragged and unkempt. He hides his arm. Rides buses, steals cars, keeps moving.

He doesn’t know anything.

\--

Sometimes they are stuck somewhere for days at a time, waiting until Tony sends them on to their next destination. They don’t dare move on their own, the Winter Soldier’s movements are too erratic. It’s more likely that they’ll move away from him that towards him.

So they stay in place. They work out and see the sights, get dinner. Steve chafes at it, desperate to actually find Bucky but there’s nothing he can do about it so he tries to enjoy it instead.

He tells Sam about Bucky.

About the orphanage, how they grew up together and got into fights, Bucky always at his side. How Bucky took care of him when he got sick, that he got sick _a lot_. He tells him how they moved out together, pooled their money, worked hard. He doesn’t tell him about Bucky enlisting and him trying to enlist, too. Sam knows that part of the story. Everyone knows that part of the story. It’s his legend.

Steve doesn’t tell Sam about loving Bucky either. That he was in love. Is in love. The same way he had been in love with Peggy, only with Peggy he had been sure she loved him back.

He thinks that maybe Sam can tell. He smiles, anyway, a gentle smile and doesn’t push.

\--

Sometimes he is the Winter Soldier. Sometimes he is Bucky Barnes.

Control becomes harder, fraught.

Sometimes he doesn’t know where he is and what is happening. Everything is different and he doesn’t recognize—nothing is familiar, not cars, not people, not even his hands. Why is one of his arms gone, replaced with metal? What is happening? Where is Steve?

Other times he moves swiftly and precisely, full of barely controlled violence. These are the days he runs the furthest and the fastest, unsure of his destination but glad to be doing something. He knows that the man on the bridge must be close now and that things will change once he is here.

\--

“What will we do when we find him?” Sam asks.

He’s driving. Steve is in the passenger’s seat, leaning against the window, eyes closed. It’s dark outside but Tony called them a little while ago and the Winter Soldier is close. They’re almost at the coast now. There almost isn’t anywhere left to run.

“I don’t know,” Steve opens his eyes and looks at his hands, “He didn’t kill me. I would have let him but he didn’t and then he saved me.”

Sam’s eyes are sharp when he glances over, “Do you think he’ll try to hurt you again?”

Steve closes his eyes again, “I don’t think so. I don’t know what he is doing but I think he’s letting us get closer.”

\--

He is not the Winter Soldier. He is Bucky Barnes.

It’s not a big town. Not a small one either but definitely not a big one. It’s cold, late fall and the beach is empty, the sea in front of him bleak and grey as the sky.

The sand crunches behind him and he turns around. Steve, the man on the bridge, is coming towards him. In the distance he can see the car, and the other man, the one with the wings. He is ready, but he’s not here. Only Steve is here in front of him and his face looks tired and careworn and worried but also hopeful.

“Bucky?” he asks.

Yes. No.

“Sometimes,” he says, “Hi Steve.”

Steve is close now, close enough that he could punch him if he wanted to or kiss him if he wanted that. He doesn’t do wither of those things, let’s his hands hang limply at his sides. Steve touches him, his cheek. His fingers are warm and dry and his eyes flick over him, the ragged hair, the hunted eyes.

“Oh Bucky,” he says and then he surges forward and kisses him.

Bucky kisses back.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello I hope you enjoyed my work, you can find me on tumblr as littleconnections, if you want to.


End file.
